Is This the Cheapest Growth Stock Outside AI?
Profit +70%, revenue +36%, and forward P/E around 13. Regeneron jumped 13% on a day when tech stocks were falling. But a large part of that growth has an accounting explanation, and analysts’ targets are below the current price. How much of it is real business growth?
Key points
The stock jumped 13.3% on a day when the Nasdaq had its worst session since June.
Earnings per share rose 70%, but much of that jump came from outside ordinary operations.
A forward P/E of around 13 for a company with 36% revenue growth looks like a market mistake, but Wall Street sees it differently.
None of the 49 analysts recommends selling, yet the consensus target price is below the current price.
The fate of this $95 billion company rests on one drug that Regeneron doesn’t even sell itself.
The day the market looked for growth in the wrong place
Friday, October 30, 2026, was a tough day for tech investors. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86%, the S&P 500 lost 1.82%, and both indexes had their worst day since June after results from Amazon and Intel reignited concerns that massive AI spending won’t deliver the returns the market is expecting. The Nasdaq thereby closed out its worst month in more than a year.
On the same day, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals $REGN stock jumped 13.3% to 927.89 USD, a few dollars below its 52-week high of 935.35 USD. The reason: third-quarter revenue of 5.12 billion USD (+36% year over year) and non-GAAP earnings per share of 20.07 USD (+70%). That’s the kind of growth most investors expect from AI companies, not a drugmaker.
Regeneron, however, moves to a different rhythm than the market. A beta of 0.24 means the stock moves with roughly a quarter of the index’s force. Still, it gained +42.4% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 rose just 10.8%. It added 26.2% in October alone. A biotech growing like an AI stock while fluctuating less than the index sounds too good to be true. And that’s exactly why it’s worth looking at where those numbers come from.